Lair of Dreams

Page 77

“Well, then,” Mabel said, feeling on solid ground for the first time. “Let’s get to work.”
Mabel riffled through one of the files, pulling out a photograph of five people posed in front of an overgrown crepe myrtle. “Is that… Dr. Fitzgerald?”
Jericho nodded.
“He looks so young. Oh, not that he’s old now! He just looks… not quite so worried as he usually does.”
A handsome, dark-haired man with a bold smile stood beside Will, one arm thrown across Will’s shoulder as if they were brothers.
Mabel gasped. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Jake Marlowe. He and Will were friends. Once,” Jericho said.
Mabel felt it would be impolite to press Jericho on that point, so she left it alone. Jericho hoisted a strange, dusty contraption from a crate. It was a small wooden box, roughly the size of a cracker tin. A hand crank stuck out from its right side, and in its center was a long glass tube with a pencil-thin, two-pronged filament inside. Just below the filament was a numbered meter that counted in tens from zero to eighty.
Jericho dropped the odd device onto the table. He and Mabel cocked their heads in unison. Mabel tried the rusty crank. It squeaked its displeasure. “I give up. What on earth is that?”
“Not sure yet. I’m hoping one of these letters will give us some clue. Here. You take this crate and I’ll take that one. Put aside anything that has to do with Diviners.”
For the better part of an hour, Jericho and Mabel sorted through and made stacks of what seemed promising. Plenty of it was just junk—books gone to pulp, water-damaged photographs, a shopping list or postcard with a banal inscription: The flowers are in bloom. Lovely. Jericho turned his attention toward a small cache of letters nestled deep inside his crate. Every single one was addressed to Cornelius from Will. There were none from Cornelius back to Will. Jericho pulled the first letter from its envelope.
Hopeful Harbor, New York
February 11, 1906
Dear Cornelius,
Jake is most intrigued by the discovery that these Diviners seem to emit much greater radiation than the average person, similar to the ghost readings we’ve gotten, and that Diviners have the capacity to disrupt electromagnetic fields. He speculates that these properties could be applied toward any number of advances, from medicine to industry to our nation’s defense. Dear Cornelius, believe me when I tell you that these discoveries are as exciting to our merry band of explorers as the sighting of this verdant land must have been to the earliest travelers to these shores. We stand on the precipice of a new world, a new America, and I am certain that Diviners are the key to her extraordinary future.
Fondly,
Will
At the bottom of the page, Will had drawn a sketch of an eye-and-lightning-bolt symbol.
“Hey! I think I may have found the name of our mysterious machine!” Mabel said, waving a piece of aged paper. “It’s called the Metaphysickometer.”
“That’s a mouthful,” Jericho said, coming to stand beside Mabel and read over her shoulder.
“Yes. Um. It is. Uh… anyway. Will refers to it in this letter,” Mabel said.
New Orleans, Louisiana
February 23, 1906
Dear Cornelius,
This evening, I attended a ritual led by Mama Thibault, sixty-two years of age, born in Haiti, now resident priestess of a voudon shop on Dumaine Street. Locals come to her for help with any number of complaints, from physical ailments to spells for true love or the lifting of imagined curses. A hospitable woman with twelve grandchildren to her name, all of whom dote upon her, Mama Thibault said she’d been able to speak to the dead since the age of twelve. “The dead do not frighten me. Takes the living to do that,” she claimed. After consulting with the lwas, and extracting a fee of five cents for her services, she allowed us to test Jake’s Metaphysickometer during her ritual. As she slipped into her spiritual trance, the needle jumped to forty, then fifty, indicating the increased electromagnetic activity we’ve come to associate with the presence of ghosts. Interestingly, Mama Thibault herself seemed also to vibrate at a slightly higher frequency, interfering with the operating of much of our machinery. Jake was baffled but intrigued by this finding. Margaret and Rotke have gathered samples.
I hope you are well. Spring shall come soon enough.
Fondly,
Will
Mabel patted the strange box of wires and gears and needles. “Well, hello there, Metaphysickometer! Pleased to meet you. Gee, an early Jake Marlowe invention! Might be valuable. I wonder why he never touts this one like he does everything else?”